Happy July and Some Finishes!!

 Finally a new post!  It's been a bit crazy here. First, much to my surprise, my sister and BIL arrived on my birthday and made it extra special.  Then we had a terrible heat wave. One day the temperature at our house was almost a record setting 109 degrees, and keeping our plants alive was a challenge. However, we used some of the hot weather to get out of town, and we've also taken lots of walks in our local woods to keep cool.

Our first escape was to the North Cascades ranger station where we took a nice hike from there called the River Loop Trail.  The Three Fingers Mountain was in clear view also.

Then last week Wednesday we went to Mount Rainier. Typically, it was hiding, but we saw lots of other mountains and lots of pretty wild flowers plus SNOW!

Here's a bit of the view from the lodge. All those cars are in just one of the parking lots! We were surprised how crowded it was for the middle of the week. I did see quite a lot of out of state liscense plates though.

There were lots of water falls, thanks to the melting snow.

Avalanche lilies were everywhere, and we saw some Pasque flowers, as well.

There was still snow on some of the trails though.

And since my last post, I have finished 3 pairs of socks and a tiny dolly.

Monkey Socks

Embossed Leaves

Spring Forward

 

Covid Nurse (for a choir friend)

Tomorrow we are headed off to Hurricane Ridge for another adventure, and of course I'll be taking along some knitting! Have a great week! 😊

A Nice Walk on a Hot Day

Happy Flag Day! That photo of Mt. Rainier was taken about a week ago, and since then it's been pretty rainy. That day it  was really hot (for here), so we went to Coulon Beach to take our walk. The day before on our walk in our neighborhood, we watched a bunch of crows chasing a hawk! This time we saw turtles and a heron.

The turtles love to sunbathe.

A little ways down the path, we saw a lot of Canadian geese.  Within the flock was this Mama and her babies.  We chuckled to see the goslings trying to flap their "wings".

 

At the entrance to the walking/bike path entrance is this cairn.

I added a rock, and then we headed back to our car which was on the other side of the park. It's a fun place to go on a hot day!

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Yesterday we helped our church organist celebrate his retirement. It's so hard to see him go, but he deserves some time with his families after 30+ years on the job. (He and his wife liked the cross stitch tray, and I hope they will find it to be useful.)

Eye Candy Friday:

 Another  photo of our Favorite Mountain! You can see it from lots of places! Or do you think it moves around? 😉

Finally a Couple Finishes!!

 Now that this project has been finished and delivered, I can finally share it.  When I saw this kit, I knew it would be just perfect for our organist who is retiring next Sunday after 30+ years at our church. He also plays the piano, and his wife is an amazing flute player. It took a long time to stitch though.

And I actually completed a pair of socks as well as another bracelet.

At the moment, I'm working on another cross stitch that is quite complicated and another pair of socks, but in the meantime we 've been doing  lots of yardwork and taking lots of walks.

   Last Wednesday we had a crazy afternoon. It was really warm, so we decided to go to Gig Harbor, WA, for dinner and also visit one of my favorite yarnshops. When we pulled into the parking lot at the shop, I nearly fainted because the yarnshop was GONE! Luckily I looked up and saw that it had moved upstairs on the other side of the building.  After that we decided to go for a walk on the Cushman Trail before dinner.  Well,  we could only  find the alternate trail and got way too hot looking for the "real" trail.  We did see an interesting piece of artwork though as well as a great view of Mount Rainier.

 The post had carvings all the way around but this was my favorite part.

And then it was time to eat. Well guess what? The restaurant was closed for construction for 2 more days.  Luckily and thanks to our GPS we found another of the same restaurants on our way back home.  Our next walk wasn't nearly as exciting, but more about that another day.

Our Deer Lounge

 On an afternoon last month, we looked our our window and saw this deer lounging in our backyard.

And just a few minutes ago, we had another visitor!  This one seems just as comfortable but has larger horns and its coat seems a different color.  Before leaving, it enjoyed a snack of salmon berry leaves, but thankfully ignored everything else!

I wonder what we'll see next?  Hopefully not the bear that seems to wander around in these parts!

Finally a New Post!

 In case you haven't guessed, things here have been kind of crazy. Early in March I fell and was hobbling around for a while. Plus, we did quite a lot of child care for our daughter's two kids; she  is working at home, and after school restarted Max and Stella had to be picked up mid-morning and then they had online classes during the day each Wednesday. We had lots of fun doing things in the afternoons, taking walks and even an adventure at one of our local parks. It's in the middle of our town and is a working farm with goats, sheep, and horses plus a few chickens.

One day we saw a Mama and Papa Eagle at a park not far from their house in Magnolia! Apparently the eagles return to their nest in that tree every year.  We were happy to see them when we did because the tree is leafing out making it more difficult.

Apparently Papa stands guard while Mama tends the nest.

Stella is perfecting her knitting skills and was proud to make her dolly a hat!

And then just a couple of weeks ago, just to keep things really interesting they got a cute little puppy.  More about Lulu another day.  Just this week, Catherine's niece got home from college and took over helping out with the children, so we've been very busy doing some very neglected yardwork as well as catching up with friends. That's it for now; I'm off to read some blogs finally!

Lots of Walking!

On the way home from getting our second COVID shot we caught a glimpse of the new moon! 

Since then we've had some really nice days, so we've been exploring the local trails. We started out with a trail built where there were originally rail road tracks and did a few sections over four different days. Most recently we walked on the part of the trail that goes through our town.

Much to our surprise we came upon this art called "Nails. It's on the trail that passes The Soun Transit light rail link in Bellevue. Just prior to that, the trail splits and passes a very marshy area  where we saw these ducks.

Art and nature all in one walk!

Yesterday because it was cloudy we just walked on our neighboring hills. A couple of days ago though we decided to check out another trail called the Lake to Lake. We haven't walked on a lot of it, but it seems to connect with the lakes in our city.

 

 We did go to Phantom Lake and also saw Phantom Creek on a side trail. There are lots of houses around this lake but we found one spot where we saw some folks with their bikes; they'd actually been wading Brrrr!  On the street side, we saw a Monkey Tree! They have the strangest looking fruit.

And then we saw the most amazing outdoor train layout. Have you ever seen anything like this outside?

Today we walked in the other direction on this part of the trail, but I will save those photos for another post.  I did, however, finish one whole project in February! Another bracelet.  These are so fun to do.

The quilt and counted X stitch aren't  close to being done though.  Enjoy the rest of your week!